“Experience with Photoshop strongly preferred.” This qualification listing seemed to haunt me while I was searching for summer internship opportunities earlier in the year. I have never had an opportunity to use Photoshop in any capacity, yet it seemed almost all of the internships that I was interested in were looking for an intern with Photoshop experience. The Springfield Armor was no different. During my phone interview with the Director of PR and Marketing at the Armor, I remember him asking if I had any graphic design experience. My heart sank a little as I truthfully told him that I didn’t, but would be eager to learn. After getting off the phone I remember thinking…”Well, there goes that opportunity. I guess I’ll have to keep searching.” I was so excited when I found out I had been offered the Marketing and PR intern position, but the fact that I had no graphic design experienced still lingered in my head as I knew I would be expected to design flyers and other promotional pieces.

An image we made for a Facebook post congratulating Jason Kidd on becoming head coach of the Brooklyn Nets, our NBA affiliate.

When I arrived to my internship on the first day, I met the other intern I would be working with. I was relieved to find out that she didn’t have any experience either. “Good, we can figure this out together,” I thought to myself. We spent a lot of the first week experimenting with Photoshop and looking up different tutorials on Youtube and various blog posts to grasp the basics. As I begin to near the end of my internship, I took a peak back at some of our earlier Photoshop efforts…yikes. Luckily, we have both improved and feel pretty comfortable navigating Photoshop and creating different graphics. Throughout our internship we designed graphics for various Facebook posts (including the Facebook cover photo), newsletter articles, flyers, website graphics, etc. We’re certainly not experts, but I feel like we’ve come a long way and learned a lot. We even found ourselves critiquing and commenting on some of the major league teams’ Photoshop images. “Not sure how I feel about the use of the outer glow on this one…” “I like the drop shadow here….” “Wow, this guy clearly has some great Photoshop skills…”

The Springfield Armor’s current Facebook cover photo. (Like us on Facebook, facebook/springfieldarmor)

Experience with Photoshop is a skill that I believe will become incredibly useful in the future when searching for other job opportunities, and I am thankful for getting this experience with the Springfield Armor.

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